An AIDS Lifecycle lesson I should have remembered: Drink before you’re thirsty, and eat before you’re hungry.

I collapsed as soon as I got to the airport hotel, and spent a couple hours in a hazy state before it dawned on me that this wasn’t normal. I knew I’d been dehydrated in Antigua (which is so damn hot the sweat just pours out of you), but thought I’d gotten enough water–but something was definitely wrong. So I ate half a Power Bar out of my first-aid kit, which gave me enough energy to stagger downstairs and ask the women at the guesthouse to make me some food. At this point it dawned on me that I’d only eaten twice in the last 48 hours.

Anyway, I think I was severely dehydrated, suffering from an electrolyte imbalance, and seriously underfed, but four hours later, I’m back on the road to feeling like a real human being. It’ll probably take me a day or two to get fully rehydrated, but I’m no longer falling over, and that’s a good thing.

Lesson for future: remember to eat and drink.

Now I’m looking ahead to Belize, and it promises to be exciting. There are four really interesting things going on in Belize. The first is the Punta Gorda ecotourism association, which offers a chance to stay in Mayan villages (and make hot chocolate from cacao beans!). It’s in southern Belize, at the very bottom of the country. The best part is that the villages are traditional but all have English as a second language, meaning it’s quite possible to talk to them about handicrafts, food, etc.

(Chocolate, as most of my friends know, is my second obsession–I love making chocolates, keep 30-40 pounds of Valrhona on hand as a matter of course, taste any top chocolate I can get my hands on, and have a library of books on cacao and chocolate (not to mention making about 30 pounds of truffles every Thanksgiving). However, I’ve only seen a cacao tree once, at a distance, in Hawaii. One of the things I very much wanted out of this trip was the chance to see cacao where it naturally grows–it is a Central/South American tree, after all! It doesn’t grow in the Guatemalan highlands, but apparently it does grow in Belize. I’d LOVE to get to see a cacao tree up close, see how it’s harvested, and learn more about how the Mayans prepare chocolate.)

The second cool thing in Belize is the Cashew Festival, held in Crooked Tree (population 600) the first weekend in May, which celebrates all things cashew–cashew juice, cashew butter, roasted cashews, etc. I just happen to be in Belize that weekend, and it sounds like fun, and I’ve never eaten a cashew apple (the fruit from which the cashew hangs), so I’m rearranging my travel plans to see if I can go to it. Check out this writer’s view of it.

The third thing is, of course, the diving–the barrier reef off Belize is the biggest in the Western Hemisphere, and the variety of marine life is stunning. I plan to do at least 3-4 days of diving.

Last, but definitely not least, is the wildlife. A huge chunk of Belize is set aside as a nature reserve, and the flora and fauna are diverse and abundant–the Crooked Tree Reserve is said to be one of the best bird-watching places in the world. Definitely want to take some time for hiking.

So I’m considering what to do. At the moment, the most likely route seems to be to arrive in Belize City, spend half a day there, then run down to Punta Gorda (a five hour bus ride) to check out the Mayan villages. I would prefer to start out with diving, but I’m still recovering from the flu. Maybe in a few days.

First order of business, though, will be picking up malaria medication. Malaria is endemic to Belize, and I should really have started taking medication two days ago, but I haven’t been able to find a suitable medication in the small pharmacies I’ve been seeing. So, I’m buying it as soon as possible, but I’ll still have to take my chances the first few days.

Oh, and if you aren’t quite sure where Belize is (I wasn’t sure either, until I started traveling), it’s south of Mexico and east of Guatemala, just north of Honduras.

Today Guatemala, tomorrow Belize. (Have I really only been traveling for one week??)

And all I had to do to get it was ask every single vendor in the market if she had one…! The first fifteen or so all said no, but the last one had the prize…I figured SOMEONE had to have brought their weaving along to the shop. 🙂

Unlike the one I got a few days ago, this one has absolutely everything…the attachment rods, the pick, the heddles, the changing-bar, the shuttle, the beater, the belt, etc. I could pick it up right now and weave with it. (I told her I was a weaver, so she made sure I had all the pieces.) It was 350 quetzales, which is probably highway robbery, but I considered it cheap at the price. All the pieces are handmade, and quite well-used–it’s a nice collector’s piece. I’ll have to post a photo once I have one.

Forget San Antonio…anything after this would be an anticlimax. I’m going straight to the airport hotel in Guatemala, to spend the rest of the day slavering over my new prize. Must play with toy. Must play with toy. Must play with toy.

Tien

P.S. I ran into another backpacker who said she had lots of pets in her room last night as well…except she had cockroaches lined up on the wall right next to her pillow! So I don’t feel so bad about my room anymore…my roaches were well-bred, high-class roaches–they stayed in the sink and the shower!

Off to San Antonio Agua Caliente, which is also renowned for its weaving…they do pieces like the elaborately brocaded piece I mentioned yesterday. Except it’s not brocade; they’re wrapping bits of weft around several strands of warp, one at a time, in what is essentially embroidery-while-weaving. The mind reels.

Fortunately, I zipped all my packs shut before I went to bed and kept the food on top of a table, so I’m pretty sure I haven’t picked up any visitors. (I hope.) I’m going to make another run through the market, then head out to San Antonio, and then back to Guatemala City. I’m also hoping to find a pharmacy that has doxycycline (an antimalarial), as I should really have started taking it a day or two ago, since malaria is endemic to Belize. Unfortunately, it’s not all that common a drug here, since Guatemala City/Antigua are too urban to have malaria.

Antigua, about an hour out of Guatemala City, is the Guatemalan equivalent of BangkokÂ´s Khao San Road–which is to say, it’s paved in tourists, loud dance music, and people selling completely random stuff at overinflated prices. I think the gringos must outnumber the local people.

And what, you might ask, is a traveling tigress doing in a place like this?

Looking for textiles, of course!

I had been hoping to acquire textiles from more regions of Guatemala–Xela (Quetzaltenango) has fine weaving, but naturally reflects the work of the surrounding highlands. In particular, I had wanted a sample of some beautiful tapestry huipils which I hadn’t been able to find in Xela, and the guidebook had mentioned two well-known weaving shops in Antigua, and it was right next to Guatemala City, SO…

…here I am in Antigua.

I’m being grievously overcharged for a complete rathole tonight, the sort of place where the only question is whether you use your spare lock to supplement their padlock on the rusty hasp at the door, or use it to chain your packs to the bed. (I put it on the door: anyone motivated enough to break into your room will cut open your packs, and I want to protect my stuff from the hotel staff.) About the bed there’s not much question: you pull out the handy silk sleep-sheet you’ve been carting around for just such an occasion, because your body and those sheets are not going to meet.

However, it does fulfill my basic needs, i.e. it has a bed, a private bath, nominally hot (more like lukewarm) water, AND is the closest hotel to the bus station, from which I plan to depart for Guatemala City tomorrow. I can live with anything for one night, and I was not going to drag that second bag one meter further.

Second bag, you ask? Well, yes. I’ve been buying up piles of textiles, and was going to do the natural thing and mail them home, but then I remembered how subject to theft, corruption, etc. Guatemala generally is, and asked about the post office. Sure enough, the Guatemalan postal service is just as unreliable as most other services. Since I’m carting around about $400 worth of textiles (which is a small fortune here), IÂ´m NOT going to risk them in the mail. Instead, I’ll put them in luggage storage with the airport hotel when I leave for Belize.

Meanwhile, the travelingtigress is lugging around a second bag in her teeth. (And may I say, it’s damn heavy. How my somewhat-more-feline relatives manage to drag around deer and such in their teeth is completely beyond me.)

Anyway, this hotel is one of the worst I’ve encountered in my travels–only the concrete cinderblock oven in Vietnam and the overflowing toilet in Laos were worse–but what the hell, even if the shower is made of some kind of crumbling concrete and the toilet and sink have seen many better days, and I keep looking around for roaches, I can live with it for one night, and I won’t have to drag my bags over half the city. I’ve never understood why people make such a fuss over nice hotels anyway–you wind up paying enormous sums for a room you’re only going to spend two waking hours in, so who cares?

That being said, this place is still a rathole.

Anyway, I’m here, tourists and all, and find myself rather taken aback after my time in Xela. It seems odd to see so many gringos and gringas all at once. It’s like stepping out the door one day for your usual walk through the city, and suddenly finding yourself surrounded by tourists snapping photos. I find myself fiercely resenting them, and wanting them all to go away so I can have some peace and quiet. (Which is all the more ironic, since a few days ago I couldn’t wait to get away from Xela.)

I have mixed feelings about having come to Antigua. I wish I’d had a few more days in Xela, to talk to Carlos (my guide) and have him show me around, and introduce me to, the people he knows. I feel that the best part of traveling is the people you meet, and to really meet a group of people takes time–to find your contacts, to have them introduce you around, and really get to know them as people, instead of the usual tourist show. I wish I weren’t on a schedule…if I’d been traveling solo, truly solo, with no timeframe, I’d have stayed in Xela at least another few days, maybe a week, before leaving for Antigua. Traveling on a timeframe is the absolute pits.

Oh, to have six months to travel again…

Well, anyway, I’m here in Antigua, and I’ve already scored one splendid piece–it’s a huipil (woman’s blouse) covered with colorful parrots and flowers in what looks like needlepoint, but is actually extremely detailed brocade weaving. And it’s double-faced–the pattern is the same on both front and back, which takes even more skill. They do these incredibly complex weavings on the backstrap loom, because it’s portable–they can’t cart around a floor loom, but a backstrap loom can go anywhere, and they can work on it wherever they are. I saw a little girl working on one of those huipils, while minding the shop. Tomorrow I’ll go back and try to get a photo of her, and try to buy the loom she’s working on along with the part-finished piece–if I can convince her to part with it, it will be priceless for demonstrations and examples.

I’m pleased with how good my Spanish is, now–I’ve been getting around quite well recently, and bargaining in Spanish is coming easily and well. This afternoon I asked a couple people where to find an ATM, and had no trouble understanding their response. It’s such a relief to be able to move about so easily, and such a contrast with the gringos I see on the streets. I can talk to shopkeepers, ask them where something came from, even say, “Hey, that comes from Xela, doesn’t it?”, and even have short conversations about the pieces on display. It’s much better than where I was even a few days earlier. I love it.

Damn. I really wish I had more time here. I never should have gotten that ticket to Belize.

Well, I did buy it, and off I’ll go, and I’ll certainly have a great time there. But it won’t be here.

Three weeks isn’t long enough. Six months isn’t long enough. I want to see EVERYTHING! And there are so many things I’ll never get to see, try, do. Life is so damn short.

Just a quick note to say that my fever has FINALLY broken, and I’m no longer waking up in the middle of the night with chills, groping for the extra blanket and acetominephen. It is SO nice not to have to pop pills every few hours to stay coherent. And I have more energy, which is a good thing. (I am amused to say, though, that despite the flu I still managed to exhaust my guide yesterday. I suppose that’s just natural tiger enthusiasm.) I’m going to try buying that backstrap loom now, and then I’m off to Antigua, near Guatemala City, where I hear there are even more shops with good textiles. I’m still missing a few samples, and hope to fill out my collection there. 🙂